Pennâ€™s Vincent Price Named to Participate in National Presidential Innovation Lab

Vincent Price, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, has been named to the Presidential Innovation Lab, an effort by the American Council on Education to examine possible models, inspired by changes from new educational technologies such as massive open online courses, or MOOCs, to boost the number of Americans able to earn a college degree.

Price is among 14 college and university officials participating. The Lab will be an opportunity for higher-education leaders to engage in proactive thinking about this new learning space and to guide a national dialogue about potential new academic and financial models that can help close persistent attainment gaps, including those among low-income young adults.

The initial session will be held July 21-23 at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., an independent, non-profit research organization that will help guide the work of the Lab. A second two-day meeting will take place in Washington in October.

Also participating in the Presidential Innovation Lab are college and university officials from institutions in Arizona, California, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

Lab participants will consider questions such as how newer educational innovations could be used by students toward degree completion and the potential impact of such innovations on the fundamental design and delivery of instruction, institutions' recognition of learning and the underlying financing models for all of higher education.

The Presidential Innovation Lab is part of a wide-ranging research and evaluation effort examining the academic potential of MOOCs announced by ACE in November.

Multimedia

A leader in the rapidly changing field of epigenetics, Shelley L. Berger has built a world-class epigenetics program at Penn that she says is distinguished by the diverse and relevant expertise of the science faculty associated with it.

Drawing from the seemingly disparate fields of economics, electrical engineering, and computer science, Rakesh Vohraâ€™s work requires the support of an institution resolutely committed to interdisciplinary researchâ€”a level of commitment he says few institutions beyond Penn have.